The Chicago Children's Museum has a 99-year lease at the newly renovated Navy Pier, and museum organizers hope the neighborhood never will be the same.

Unlike many of its more serious counterparts, where exhibits are cordoned off and sealed under glass, the children's museum is a place where young patrons are welcome to play with almost everything.

It's an idea quickly embraced by children such as Katy Dirkes, 10, of Oak Park, who spent part of Saturday morning creating gravel dams in a trough of flowing water at an exhibit about erosion.

"With most museums, I think of, like, old things," she said. "But these exhibits are fun, because you can play with them."

If the Ferris wheel erected last summer on Navy Pier was the first hint that Chicago's lakefront is adopting a more playful demeanor, then Saturday's grand opening of the children's museum left little doubt.

The thunder of drums being pounded on by children filled the cavernous atrium of Navy Pier's renovated Headhouse building. A man dressed as a toy soldier led the parade of youngsters who all but took over the facility in their apparent zeal to herald the arrival of a museum all their own.

Like the children it serves, the museum is young and growing. It opened its doors in 1982 with one exhibit in two hallways of what is now the Chicago Cultural Center.

It moved into 21,000-square-foot quarters in North Pier in 1989. But after 13 years, the museum has found its permanent home in the 57,000-square-foot, three-level, $14.5 million facility inside the Navy Pier building.

Hundreds of families lined up Saturday for a chance to try out the exhibits, not all of which are supposed to be fun.

In one, "Face to Face: Dealing with Prejudice and Discrimination," children have a chance to walk through a replica of a school bus in which young passengers hurl insults. At the end of the exhibit, a sign asks children to consider how they should deal with such affronts and to discuss their feelings with an adult.

But most of the exhibits elicited smiles and laughter. In "The Inventing Lab," youngsters can explore aerodynamics by constructing foam objects and hurling them from 50-foot towers.

The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 except from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursdays, when admission is free.